All posts in Technology

Posted:
January 14, 2012
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Samsung Delivers Social Media to Your TV

Remember the days of hooking up cable TV with a box on what was known as a tube.  One was just thrilled to have VH1, MTV, and HBO available for entertainment.  Those days are well beyond us, and today we demand more.  Personally I’m boycotting Comcast, Dish Network, and Direct TV all together.  For years they soaked up our wallets with hidden fees with no real advancement in technology. Then technology hit the market in full force with the Plasma TV and DLP technology from Texas Instruments. Add the LCD to this lineup and technology in picture quality really improved.  But it was the simultaneous development of these technologies along with the iPhone and the boom of easy to use applications on smart phones that has finally led us to Samsung Smart TV interface packed with applications.

The greatest thing about the applications world is that once you buy an application, it continues to improve with updates and bug fixes that are usually a result of consumer input or suggestion.  The company with the best applications and consistent improvements wins the support of the consumer.  Right now Apple is winning this game, but the Android open-source market has made a strong push, though it lacks the quality control of Apple products.

Samsung on the other hand, has finally played it’s hand in the industry in which it has the upper hand, the Smart TV industry.  Samsung already has the best looking TV’s on the market and now it has the best TV application interface (Samsung Smart TV) that has enabled us to do something we would normally only do on our laptop computer or smartphone, and that is socialize.  Social networking apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Skype are now available on the Samsung application market.  All of these technologies in one place that can be controlled using the Samsung TV remote application on your smart phone. 

Finally, we have reached the age of the Jetsons, and can literally talk to people as we watch from our televisions.  We can utilize social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and Skype to read the news, talk to our friends, and even update our profile.  Welcome to the future…

Posted:
January 13, 2012
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Android’s Iris Beats Apple’s Siri With Real Answers

As the competition heats up amongst smart-phone personal assistants, both Apple’s Siri and Android’s Iris have emerged as leading technologies.  But let’s not forget about Google’s application, which can do many of the things these two technologies can do, but seams to be lacking in voice recognition capabilities.  So who really wins the battle between this incredible new technology that brings us one step closer to having our very own C3PO (StarWars)?

Apple’s Siri really is a smooth operator, and the voice really sounds like a chick I might actually date.  If she could effectively answer more of my questions, I’d be in love.  I think Siri could be the best overall application with a few updates to the system.

In comes the Droid’s most talked about application, Iris.  Iris has a slight edge on the competition because it’s developers have teamed up with Cha Cha’s question answering service that provides the personal assistant with better answers to questions people might actually ask.  It’s almost like a boost in language skills so to speak.  The only downfall to Droid’s Iris is the sound of it’s voice.  It not something I could fall in love with, but there is a solution out there to solve this problem. There is an application out there called SVOX that will allow you to change the voice to a sexy female British voice which reminds me of a James Bond film.  This could be love.

Overall, the battle is heating up and the Iris and Siri will continue to battle it out for years to come…  Check out the video below.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77B8DF0XMGc